Welcome to your free bi-weekly newsletter from Connecticut Explored with the latest stories, the newest Grating the Nutmeg podcast, programs and exhibitions from our partners to see/watch this month, and more!
Have You Eaten Yet?
Food brings different people and cultures together. The Fairfield Museum and History Center developed interactive gallery experiences for its flagship exhibition Creating Community: 400 Years of Fairfield Stories. Michelle Cheng and Chelsea Garth write “The stories featured in Creating Community deepen our understanding of New England’s past and give voice to the many people who make up our community.” One of the interactive experiences is named “Have You Eaten Yet?”, inspired by this question that is frequently used as a gesture of love by immigrant mothers. The exhibit features five dishes that represent different communities in Fairfield, CT. The experience uses wooden block puzzles to assemble the dishes.
The featured dishes are succotash, pumpkin pie, chicken paprikash, green bean casserole, and lomo saltado. Succotash is a Native American dish that celebrates the summer harvest, honoring companion planting by utilizing the “three sisters”; beans, corn, and squash. The pumpkin pie recipe is inspired by the colonial period. Pumpkin was traded throughout North America by Indigenous people and eventually was included in English pie recipes because of contact with Indigenous communities. Chicken paprikash is a hearty Hungarian dish that has been passed down for generations by immigrants who settled in Fairfield in the 20th century. The green bean casserole became popular in the 1950s due to the easy ingredients and has remained a staple at many Thanksgiving dinners. Lomo saltado is a signature dish that brings together Chinese, and Peruvian cultures. The current version of the dish was created by Chinese immigrants in Peru introducing white rice and stir-frying techniques to a meal traditionally served with fried potatoes. The puzzles used for each dish share not only the recipes, but also many detailed facts about various ingredients and the history of the dish and their connections to Fairfield.
Read the entire story with your Connecticut Explored subscription.
Hog River Journal: Food for Thought
by Kathy Hermes
Mark Twain once wrote, “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not” (Following the Equator, American Publishing Company, 1897).
This issue is full of food and drink, and I think Mark Twain would have approved of most of it. Many of the delectables mentioned in these pages do not appear in any longevity diets (see, for example, “The Steamed Cheeseburger: A Connecticut Culinary Icon” in our Snapshots section). Fruit was at the center of a labor conflict in which demand for a popular food butted against calls to improve the wages and working conditions of those who produced it (“The Farm Workers’ Movement from California to Connecticut”). Colonization and its labor systems transformed the food and drink of Indigenous people (see “What the Wangunk Drank”) and enslaved Afro-Caribbeans (“Salt Cod: Resistance and Agency in Caribbean American Cuisine?”). The Fairfield Museum and History Center has provided us with a tour through time of some of our favorite foods, Indigenous and immigrant, hearkening back to the recipes of mothers and grandmothers from several cultures. Gathering around a table is where we form friendships, connect as a family, and brainstorm ideas. The dining room table of the Cos Cob boardinghouse run by the Holley and MacRae families was a place of inspiration for some of our country’s greatest artists (see our photo essay). What food got to the table in the small town of Washington Depot is told in the story of the changing ownership of the Washington Food Market. We bookend the issue with a conversation between Andy Horowitz, our state historian, and an ice cream maker in Simsbury, and a Site Lines profile of a popular ice cream spot in West Hartford because beginning and ending with dessert seems like a good way to start and finish a food issue.
As we embrace the winter holiday season, we look forward to special delicacies and meals. It’s a time for giving thanks, and we would like to thank our readers for another wonderful year. We’re grateful for your participation in our Summer Passport Program, for the robust responses we have received and published in our Letters column, and for your continued readership. We also want to thank Central Connecticut State University, which celebrated its 175th anniversary this year and invited us to its gala. In the two years we have been located at CCSU, the university has provided our magazine with office space, interns, and students in courses eager to work on projects with us. We have benefited in myriad ways from this partnership.
This holiday season, we’d like to offer you a way to save on gifts of our magazine and children’s books for your friends and relatives. When you shop online at ctexplored.org, use the promo code GIFT24 to get 6 issues of the magazine for the price of 4 or 10 for the price of 8 and 25% off copies of Venture Smith’s Colonial Connecticut.
The Latest From Grating the Nutmeg
Entwined: Black and Indigenous Maritime History
We all know a little about New England and Connecticut’s European maritime history. Dutch traders came to North America to trade for beaver pelts and English colonists came to start new communities such as Hartford. But a new exhibition at the Mystic Seaport Museum doesn’t rehash this history - it looks to reveal African and Indigenous perspectives on water and the sea.
Entwined is the first exhibition by my guest Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, Senior Curator of Social Histories at Mystic Seaport Museum. She earned her PhD in Anthropology with a focus in Archeology at the University of Connecticut. For more on the exhibition, go here: Mystic Seaport Museum
Our second guest is Dr. Kathy Hermes, publisher of Connecticut Explored magazine and Project Historian of the award-winning project Uncovering Their History: African, African American and Native American Burials in Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground.
Listen: 198. Entwined: Black and Indigenous Maritime History
Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
TOURS BY CANDLELIGHT
Webb Deane Stevens Museum, 211 Main Street, Wethersfield, CT, wdsmuseum.org
DECEMBER 13-14, & 20-21: Experience three centuries of Christmas, beautifully lit by candlelight with accompanying wine, treats, and non-alcoholic refreshments. The tour progresses from Christmas in Connecticut and other colonies in the Deane House to Victorian Christmas in the Stevens House to 20th-century Christmas in the Webb House. Get your tickets today as space is limited! $25 members; $30 non-members
_____
Institute for American Indian Studies, 37 Curtis Road, Washington, CT, iaismuseum.org/
Annual Holiday Market: Featuring Indigenous and Local Artisans
Every Saturday & Sunday, November 30th – December 15th, 11AM – 4PM
_____
Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center, 152 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT, keelertavernmuseum.org/
Annual Holiday Boutique in the Barn
December 12 – 15, 2024 · 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Editor’s Picks
Want to explore the topics featured in this edition of the e-Newsletter? Check out these stories and podcasts from the archives.
“Native American Cuisine Saves the Colonists” Connecticut Explored, Spring 2006.
“What We Loved to Eat” Connecticut Explored, Spring 2006.
“New London’s Indian Mariners” Connecticut Explored, Spring 2009.
Join us—We now offer a digital-only subscription!
Subscribe to the quarterly magazine: CTExplored.org/subscribe